I do that “dad thing” where I insist my son let me finish out the Dave Brubeck song during carpool, instead of immediately tuning the radio to the drivel and crud he prefers. Nothing against drivel and crud, of course, or the breathless idiocy of the very talented Ariana Grande.

It’s just that Brubeck — like Miles Davis, like the Beatles, like Bach — will endure. There is a sophisticated bounce to his music, an aural crossover dribble. For hundreds of years, dads and sons will share the jaunty lyricism of the great Dave Brubeck.

“Really?” my son grumbles.

“Really,” I insist.

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I’m not just a dad; I’m a nostalgia machine. I miss Hugh Grant movies and pop hits you could hum. I miss the tater tots they served in fifth grade at Grove Avenue Elementary.

I miss drive-in theaters and “Gunsmoke” and ma-and-pa Italian joints.

Basically, I miss everything.

We Irish, huh? We laugh when we should cry and cry when we should laugh. Really, we shun any sort of sensible reaction. My poor son is now being schooled in his ancestors’ counterintuitive impulses.

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I’ll make a discerning man of him yet.

The columnist-conductor stabbing at something during rehearsal of the anthem.

(Michael Stanley / Burbank Philharmonic)

Of course, like most sons, he will discard everything I preach, then circle back and pick and choose when he gets a little older. They admit that dads get smarter over time. But when you’re 16, a dad seems only a Brubeck-loving goof.

“Look at that,” I say.

“What?” he asks.

“Bald guy in a Bentley.”

“Where?” he says.

I explain that I’d rather have a full head of hair and a Honda than be a bald guy in a Bentley. That’s just me, though. I am, by nature, secretly envious of almost everyone.

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“Ah, spring,” I say with a sneeze, as the convertible zooms by in the pollen and the sun.

“You’re so weird,” my son says.

“Thank you,” I say.

Another dad (Steve) was telling me the other day how his dog laps at his coffee when he isn’t looking, more evidence of the deceit that is rampant in most American homes.

Last week, our own White Fang — not quite a wolf, not in any sense a dog — suddenly tore into the basket of pine cones we keep by the fireplace. These pine cones had been there forever — for so long, we no longer really saw them — yet all of a sudden, Fang deemed them chew toys.

To win a Grammy, you’re on the road a lot, which interferes with a normal life. We don’t mention it much, but a normal life can be a great gift (Ask Elvis. Ask Michael Jackson).

So, to live out a dream, I actually conducted “The Star-Spangled Banner” recently, and I cannot tell you what a thrill it was. I clutched the baton the way I clutch a daily newspaper, as a lifeline to a more enlightened era.

Chris Erskine is a nationally known humor columnist and editor for the Los Angeles Times. He writes for the Sports, Travel and Saturday sections and edits on the paper’s Features staff. As an editor, he has been a part of two Pulitzer Prize-winning teams at The Times (for his graphics work on the Northridge quake and the North Hollywood bank robbery). He is best known to readers for his weekly humor pieces on life in suburban Los Angeles. His latest book, “Daditude,” released in 2018, is a collection of his favorite Times columns on fatherhood. He has written two other books, “Man of the House” and “Surviving Suburbia,” which reached the Los Angeles Times bestseller list. The Chicago native has also worked for papers in New Orleans and Miami.

Lawmakers passed a bill targeting pornographic “deep fakes.” The technology has been used to digitally graft the face of a person into a pornographic film without the people involved knowing or consenting to it.